Category Archives: Lists

Sep 30 2011
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Lists, One minute read, The Cairo Metro

Love Is as Strong as Death

Bad news for you guys

Last week I went through a regrettable period when I was obsessed with discussing love, its meaning, and its ostensible relationship to marriage with anyone and everyone. Unfortunately for the people around me, I was especially interested in muddling myself in others’ affairs by collecting their personal stories and opinions.  Much to the relief of my friends, I am slowly recovering from this bizarre phase. But just as I thought the subject was closed and I had heard everything possible, the other day I spotted a purse on the metro that discussed the subject in a new way.

It’s not unusual to see all kinds of nonsensical, semi-sensical, obscene, hilarious, and otherwise egregious English splattered all across this city on billboards, t-shirts, walls, etc. Not a day goes by that I don’t see something ridiculous like a shirt that says “who’s baby is this?” or “living in the lap of subset luxury.” But this bag was a different case: it was a beacon of knowledge that stated, matter-of-fact like and without sequins, that “love is as strong as death.” When I read this as I entered the metro car, I was first startled, then amused, and then pensive as I considered why the statement had made such an impression on me. There must be some kind of truth in it, I thought to myself, as I wrote it down and vowed to analyze it later. Upon completing said analysis, I decided to leave everything else I had learned behind and take this as the one source of truth on love.

Allow me to share what love means. By the way, I realize that the statement only compared the strength of love to death, but I go hard core in my analyses, meaning I ended up comparing love to death.

1. Love is unavoidable.

2. Love is damaging to your health.

3. Love’s grip is as icy cold as the embrace of the grave.

4. Love lasts forever.

5. Love ruins lives.

6. Love ends things.

7. Love brings family members together for occasions at which many of them would rather be apart.

8. Love requires accessories.

9. Love’s real damage comes after the fact.

10. From the moment we are born, we are meant to love.

11. Love does not require talent or skill.

12. Love is a bummer.

13. Love does not play favorites.

14. Love only happens once.

15. Though love is extremely common, it is a very personal experience.

16. The end result of love is always the same.

It’s a deep analysis, to be sure, and the odds I missed anything are slim. But if I did, please feel free to add your two cents and no more.

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Sep 15 2011
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Humorous, Lists, One minute read, Travelling

Follow These Rules and We’ll Get Along

all the ingredients for a weekend of fun

Some quick guidelines for my colleagues who are about to travel with me to Ain Sukhna:

1) As mentioned on this blog before, my mouth will gape open when I fall asleep, which will happen frequently and regardless of location. As soon as we enter the bus, I will be slain by the sandman. This will happen again in a much more literal fashion once my feet hit the sand of the beach. Feel free to mock me, because ultimately I know that through my slumber I am adding years to my life which I will use to make myself better than all of you.

2) I will drink coffee at five or six o’clock every day. If this does not happen, then I will become belligerent and refuse to speak. If a state of non-coffee continues to prevail, I will proceed to scream without stopping until coffee is brought and the coffee-hunger is assuaged.

3) On the beach, I will cover myself with a large scarf like a shroud. This is because I burn easily. It will look bizarre, but ultimately it’s a better option than making you stare at me with bubbly, oozy, burn skin.

4) My preferred breakfast partner of choice is my computer, which I will not have with me. Please do not interact with me unless you are first interacted with.

We can all have a more pleasant time together if these simple rules are followed, as well as the dozens that I didn’t have time to write down. Please make no mistakes. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your colleague, who will be back and blogging come Saturday

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Sep 07 2011
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Fiction, Lists, Three minute read

So You Want to Take a Nap in the Student Lounge

This could be you, minus the shoes

You stayed up late last night even though it was a school night. All signs point to an extreme deficit of z-power: your body has forgotten how to digest food, speech is difficult, and you feel like you’ve drunk unicorn blood and are only half-alive. At school, all you can think about is how close to death you feel even as the end of class seems so far away. Despite your best efforts, it appears that no amount of doodling will save you from dozing off in class in front of your less sleepy colleagues.

Fear not. You have a 45 minute break coming up right at 12:00, and you know exactly what you must do. It’s time to get your student-lounge nap on. A nap in the student lounge is a great way to wrinkle your shirt and put creases on your face while also being refreshed by much needed REM sleep. Here ‘s some advice about how you can make your student lounge nap a positive experience for yourself and those around you.

a. Remember that you will be stared at. With this in mind, try to sleep in a funny position in order to further the laughter that will be had at your expense. If going with the flow doesn’t appeal to you, you could put a bag over your face or write a polite note that says “I can see you too.” Generally people like concise, terse notes.

b. Be as suspicious as possible about your nap. Though you are not ashamed of the fact you are napping in a public location, do not mention it to anyone and lie if anyone asks you what you’re doing. Disguise your nap by setting up a magazine, book, or scroll in such a position that you could be reading it. This step is especially helpful for fooling people from behind.

c. Take your shoes off. If you’re comfortable, everyone else is comfortable. People love nothing more than seeing bare feet on public furniture.

d. Set an alarm. If you’re really serious about napping, this is a step that can’t be missed. The alternative is either sleeping through class, or waking up to an acquaintance poking you as you hurry to brush the drool off your face before getting up groggily and then going to class where you say wildly inappropriate things because of your sleepy stupor.

e. Don’t forget that it’s okay to drool, snore, twitch, babble, sleep stalk, and sleep steal. Do everything you would normally do at home or in the doctor’s office. Your colleagues should accept you for who you are, especially in the human state that most closely resembles death.

f. If you have dreams, tell everyone about them. Dreams are great conversation starters, and they will be especially interesting for people who were not necessarily in your dream, but in the same room as you while you were dreaming.

g. Last but not least: have fun! Make this naptime yours! Personalize it! Bring a little nap kit next time or tiny commemorative pillows for everyone who was there! If you don’t get it right the first time, don’t worry! There is no doubt you will be foolish enough to stay up to the wee hours of the morning for no good reason on a school night again.

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Sep 01 2011
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Anecdotes, Humorous, Lists, Open Letters, Three minute read

Six Stages of Packing

STOP EVERYTHING! WHERE IS YOUR TUNA?

It is finished. I have moved and am now in a magical place called Mohandiseen, where the honking in the distance almost sounds like crickets, the sky has 3 more stars, and cotton candy grows on trees.

I don’t care if I have to eat beans and toothpaste for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea time snack in order to live here. It will be worth it to have this haven where I can literally cocoon myself away from the craziness of Tahrir, in order to appreciate it more fully.

While packing, I gleaned some impressive information on the emotional phases of the moving process. Allow me to elaborate.

Time to Go

The day has come. It’s time to move out of your apartment, the apartment where you have lived. You saw this day coming because you signed the lease and chose this day yourself. Still, it strikes you like a thunderbolt. You squirm in your shoes, you pace up and down nervously as your palms sweat and your eyes swim, but you can’t avoid what’s coming. It’s time to pack. As you begin the laborious process, you start progressing through the six stages.

Stage 1: Despondency

As you survey the grotesque bulk of your possessions, your heart is stricken with an iced lightening rod. Hercules himself would have trembled at the sight of what must be squirreled away…unworn clothing, laughably ambitious shoes, three partially used deodorant sticks, two cans of tuna, etc. You experience earth shattering, heart breaking, soul sucking hopelessness. “Might as well give up now,” you think, as you check to see what’s on television.

Stage 2: Elbow Grease

After weeping briefly, you pull yourself together and realize that today is the first day of the rest of your life, and that if you don’t pack your landlord will confiscate you and your possessions. You start puttering around the room, rearranging and evaluating things, and all the while hope slowly wells within your chest. “Maybe this can be done,” you think, “and where did those cans of tuna go?”

Stage 3: Sweat

You’re really moving now. The hot Cairo sun is beating down upon all the Cairene earth. In the AC-less room, your temples and back grow damp as the pile of material possessions is slowly organized and moved into seal-able spaces. You are happy in your delusion that things are actually going to get done. “I’ll even be able to fit in my cans of tuna,” you contentedly state to yourself.

Stage 4: Despair

Your bags are filling fast and you there is no end in sight. Your forehead is sweaty and you feel like crap for some reason, even though you got three hours of sleep and have only eaten chocolate. Emotions run high as you recall past loves and wonder where they are now. Are they packing too? Do they know what this is like? As you look at the miserable pile of crap your life has become, a mere anchor to a place you are no longer attached to, you begin to wonder what the meaning of it all is.

Stage 5: Rejuvenation

After looking at a tree, you realize things aren’t so bad. You decide to throw away the yards of velvet you wanted to make into a magician’s cape for your niece, and that makes you feel better. Now there’s just the odd shaped things like packing tape left, most of which can be thrown into your backpack. “Wait a second, ” you think to yourself, “WHERE ARE MY CANS OF TUNA?” You lay your eye upon them and a chorus of heavenly angels sings as you nestle them into the perfect spot in your suitcase. The end is in sight and it looks like a celebration at Pizza Hut.

Stage 6: Jubilation

After cramming the last pair of socks through the crack of your suitcase and zipping it shut before it could escape, you glance around your room and realize you have done the impossible. You have packed your life into measurable square feet, and you have done so with only a mild breakdown. Come hell or high water, one thing is for certain. As soon as you get to your new apartment, you’re unpacking everything and cracking open a can of tuna in celebration. Champagne is for squares and people who don’t eat enough protein.

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Aug 22 2011
8 Comments
Humorous, Lists, Three minute read, Travelling

A Failing Grade for Italian Tourism

This is the sun setting over the Italian countryside near San Benedetto del Tronto. You may now weep from the beauty.

I returned from my Italian adventure at the ripe hour of 2:30 on Sunday morning, Cairo’s hazy smog clouds welcoming me in an open cough to its crowded haphazard streets. Upon evaluating to what extent my trip was a failure or a success based upon a numerical gradation of the number of goals I accomplished, I found that even with partial credit given, I only achieved a raw score of 45.45%, otherwise known as an F. Unfortunately this means I will have to go to Italy once again in the spring in order to try to achieve a passing score and graduate onto other countries.

Below I will evaluate the success of my trip objective by objective:

1. Eat Italian food. SUCCESS

Accomplished with surprising ease. In direct defiance of variety, Italians tend to eat Italian food every day, even eschewing other respectable ethnic cuisines like Mexican or Chinese.

2. Drink fermented Italian beverages. SUCCESS

I made my own Italian wine by stealing some grapes from a neighbor’s vineyard, mashing them up, putting yeast in my sock, throwing it all in an empty 7 UP bottle and letting it sit in the sun. When it was nice and bubbly I passed it an a bottle of Tylenol around and we had ourselves a great time.

3. Sit in a meadow and breathe. SUCCESS

After panting up a rather steep hill, I and companion came upon an old villa that overlooked the city and right in front of it was a steep decline that led into a meadow. I scrambled down it and sat in the shade of a tree for a few moments while my travel companion, who is not the meadow sitting sort, opted to wait for me. I could smell fresh mint around me and had almost achieved spiritual revelation when I remembered my companion and I crawled back up and we got on with our lives.

4. Nap on the beach in a one piece bathing suit. SUCCESS

My ten dollar public-swimming-pool-blue swimsuit I bought in Ecuador is not holding up great, but it sure does accent my pasty white flesh. When I arrived at the beach and stripped down to my swimwear, my Italian host’s parents asked me if it was my first time at the beach, and I grabbed her mother by her shoulders, stared at her with desperate eyes and said “In the sun…it’s my first time in the sun…”

5. Find something with little blue flowers on it to purchase and call my own. Place in someone else’s bag and claim they stole it. FAIL

Lots of crap to buy, nothing I wanted with little blue flowers.

6. Find cool gifts for the family to replace what I originally planned to bring back for them: pyramid keychains and little piles of sand. FAIL

Gifts are way too expensive in Italy. For the price of one scarf for my sister in Italy I could buy her an entire loom and weaving lessons in Egypt.

7. Get in as many people’s photos as possible while at touristy sites like the Colosseum and the Pope’s wax museum. HALF CREDIT

We tried getting in people’s pictures, but the angles proved fairly awkward so we settled for taking pictures of the tourists themselves. Vouyeristic? Possibly. Sue me.

8. Go to a hair salon and get my bangs cut. Refuse to pay and see what happens. HALF CREDIT

I didn’t go to hair salon since, as stated previously, it would have been expensive and the language barrier would have made the “not paying” thing more difficult to explain. I did, however, cut my bangs myself. Since no one notices I cut them, I believe  I have avoided a case of awkward bangs for the first time since I started cutting my bangs myself. Great success.

9. Speak with an Italian accent the whole time and see how many best friends I make. FAIL 

I opted to speak fake Italian and Spanish mixed together. I really felt I could speak Italian after having even one glass of wine, but it was interesting to note that Italians themselves continued to not understand me.

10. Verify my hypothesis that Spanish and Italian are actually the same language. HALF CREDIT

I’m giving myself half credit for this since if I spoke Spanish with people, they would usually understand what I was saying. However, these interactions were usually accompanied by wild hand gestures that corresponded to what flavors of ice cream I wanted, so I can’t say the theory was widely tested outside of ice cream shops.

11. Take a nap at least once. SUCCESS

Napped once in the bungalow, once on the beach, once in the hotel room, and once under a tree.

12. Claim I am the direct descendant of the last emperor and declare my rule over Italy via public service announcement. FAIL

13. Pretend to be German and wear socks with my sandals. HALF CREDIT

Though I did not pretend to be German, I did wear my adventure sandals everywhere. Italians do not wear adventure sandals. If it weren’t already painfully obvious by the pallor of my skin and hair that I was not Italian, my disgustingly practical footware gave it away even before I got to speaking fake Italian.

14. Coat myself in glue and then roll in macaroni. Run through the streets screaming like the famous Italian macaroni monster. HALF CREDIT

My colleague still managed to scare a child by almost running him over on a bike. The bike was unharmed.

15. Say “Mamma mia!” as many times as possible. FAIL

I only said it once and no one even heard me. They do say it a lot though.

16. Stare at my travel companion on the train when he’s not looking at me and then look away quickly when he suspects something. Repeat continually. HALF CREDIT

Instead of staring, I would fall asleep right as we boarded any form of transportation and my mouth would instantly gape open, something equally disconcerting.

17. Politely ask flight attendants to not make eye contact with me and explain I usually sit in the first class but there was a misunderstanding with my company and they booked the wrong ticket. FAIL

18. Blend in with the locals by covering my face in pizza sauce. HALF CREDIT

I unwittingly walked around for a while with some food bits on my face, though I don’t think it helped me blend in with any locals.

19. Pick and eat my own wild mushrooms. HALF CREDIT

My companion and I stumbled upon a park/orchard and we ate figs and plums right off of the trees. We called it foraging but I’m not sure if that term is properly used if one is gathering fruit in an orchard.

20. Make a new facebook friend. SUCCESS

My Italian host friended me on facebook and I accepted and her family has insisted on us coming again next year for a week. I don’t know if they are sincere but I, for one, am sincerely not ashamed of taking them up on the offer. I have proclaimed them welcome to my home in Oklahoma, but I don’t think I’m in any real danger of them accepting.

21. Fight a wild boar to the death. Eat its flesh. HALF CREDIT

I did eat boar on a bed of polenta in a medieval city, washed it down with a beer and was then married off to someone against my will, just like a real medieval lass.

22. Purchase a new spear and go truffle hunting. HALF CREDIT

I ate something with truffle oil on it and it was delicious. It was the food equivalent of being hugged on the mouth by a mushroom.

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